(Sept. 30) Younger than it has been thought, although his age, over a million years, it is still remarkable. Lake Ohri, or Ohrid, a city in Macedonia, is the most ancient lake in Europe, one of the oldest on Earth. Halfway between Albania and Macedonia, the Ohrid is one of the largest lakes of the Balkan Peninsula, a fascinating place with clear waters and lush coastline. Ancient fortresses, towns and old Orthodox churches on its banks. A magical place of which now we know the true age thanks to a study that also has an Italian touch. The exact dating of the lake was, in fact, calculated by an international team which is part of a group of Italian researchers led by Giovanni Zanchetta, a researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Pisa, and experts from the CNR-IGAG Institute of Rome (Environmental Geology and Geo-engineering) and CNR-IGG of Pisa (Geosciences and Geo-resources), the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) of Pisa and Rome and the universities of Bari and Rome La Sapienza. The research started in 2013 with a campaign of deep drilling in five sites on the lake. The first results emerged from the analysis of sediment (in total more than 2 km of carrots, now preserved at the University of Cologne, in Germany) have been disclosed in an article published on the international journal Eos. (red)
